Sao Paulo, BRAZIL
Brazil's biggest metropolis has an unorthodox plan to free up space at its graveyards during the coronavirus pandemic: digging up the bones of people buried in the past and storing their bagged remains in large metal containers.
Sao Paulo's municipal funeral service said in a statement last week that the remains of people who died at least three years ago will be exhumed and put in numbered bags, then stored temporarily in 12 storage containers it has purchased.
The containers will be delivered to several cemeteries
within 15 days, the statement said.
Sao Paulo is one of the COVID-19 hot spots in Latin
America's hardest-hit nation, with 5,480 deaths as of Thursday in the city of
12 million people.
And some health experts are worried about a new surge now
that a decline in intensive care bed occupancy to about 70 per cent prompted
mayor Bruno Covas to authorize a partial reopening of business this week. The
result has been crowded public transport, long lines at malls and widespread
disregard for social distancing.
Many health experts predict the peak of Brazil's pandemic
will arrive in August, having spread from the big cities where it first
appeared into the nation's interior. The virus has so far killed almost 42,000
Brazilians, and Brazil passed the United Kingdom on Friday to become the
country with the world's second highest death toll.
Dr Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization's
emergencies chief, said Friday that the situation in Brazil remains "of
concern," although acknowledged that intensive care bed occupancy rates
are now below 80 per cent in most areas of the country.
"Overall the health system is still coping in Brazil,
although, having said that, with the sustained number of severe cases that
remains to be seen," Ryan said.
"Clearly the health system in Brazil across the
country needs significant support in order to sustain its effort in this
regard. But the data we have at the moment supports a system under pressure,
but a system still coping with the number of severe cases."
The experts aren't the only ones with concerns. At Sao
Paulo's biggest cemetery, Vila Formosa, Adenilson Costa was among workers in
blue protective suits digging up old graves Friday. He said their work has only
grown more arduous during the pandemic, and as he removed bones from unearthed
coffins, he said he fears what is to come.
"With this opening of malls and stores we get even
more worried. We are not in the curve; we are in the peak and people aren't
aware," Costa said. "This isn't over. Now is the worrisome moment.
And there are still people out."
In April, gravediggers at Vila Formosa buried 1,654 people,
up more than 500 from the previous month. Numbers for May and June aren't yet
available.
Before the pandemic, Costa said, he and colleagues would
exhume remains of about 40 coffins per day if families stopped paying required
fees for the plots. In recent weeks that figure has more than doubled.
Remains stored in the metal containers will eventually be
moved to a public ossuary, according to the statement from the city's funeral
office. Its superintendent, Thiago Dias da Silva, told the Globo network that
containers have been used before and they are more practical and affordable
than building new ossuaries.
Work has been so busy in Sao Paulo cemeteries since the
outbreak began that one of Costa's relatives was buried only a few meters
(yards) from where he was working one day — without him even knowing. "I
only found out the next day," he said.
Three other people he knew have also died from the virus.
"People say nothing scares gravediggers. COVID does," Costa said.
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